David,
your post has wits. Yet it reminded me of 'atheism' which starts from the
"belief" it is supposed to deny. I am not an atheist, because I do not know
what to deny: what do people 'think' to call "god"?
My question to comp was (and I think it is different from your position):
Let me "IN" into learning about 'comp' from the outside, the 'no comp'
mindset.
When you say: "Comp is false" you accepted it and argue about "IT".
I ask "What is comp - if I am outside the entire mindset and don't assume"?
Bruno is VERY logical and knowledgeable, but his 'mindset' includes numbers
and mathematical thinking. I got a lot of good responses from him to my
questions and all started from some "in theory" assumption (e.g. 'assuming
comp', etc.). What if we do NOT assume it?
I asked about 'numbers' stripped from counting and quantities. Otherwise
they are only quantizing adjectives (6 what?). (Like the 'color green'?)
"Pure" mathematics works differently, it even substitutes the numbers with
other symbols (yes, 'symbols', if we do not think of the 'what'). I
differentiate an "applied math" in the sciences, working with quantities
identified within the limited topical models of the science. This is another
subject, - I want to concentrate here on the "numbers" concept.
Ideas 'exist' relationally (and some are translated into physical
(materialistic) features). To get to 'ideas' a receiving observer is
necessary with enough complexity to accept them. (Then we (our mind)
interpret them into the perception of reality).
In my older thinking (prone to be revised) I defined my 'information'
concept as some difference 'accepted' into an observer. The difference can
be e.g. an electric (so called) potential and the acceptor )observer!) even
a polar(!) moelcule(!), - or at a different level: a difference, like a
strange societal story is accepted by a reader of G.B.Shaw (observer).
(Existence in this ontology was the difference itself, observer anything
that accepts information.)
When the developing human 'mind' reached the complexity to identify
'numbers' the numbers enetered the human thinking. Does it make sense to
argue a homoiusion war whether they existed "before" they could be accepted?
For 'us' they started to exist when our mind became capable to 'accept' such
information.
It is only semantical in our syntax to call this situation an "invention".
It is only semantical in our syntax to call this situation an "invention".
Then we started to count and think in quantities using the newly "invented"
'numbers'. But what are these 'numbers' without the counting and quantizing?
Do they have a quantitative original meaning? Originally the 'unit' was 2,
and '1' was half of it in certain cases. In my language which is older than
the Indo - European ones a man with 1 eye is "half-eyed" and with 1 hand or
foot i said to have lost his "half" hand or foot. Yet a man is 1, a sable is
1, not 2. Many was 5, seemingly from the fingers, and in Russian grammar
they have a dual case and a "big plural" above 5. (Also: a 'unit' involves
more than one by its meaning).
David, I do not go all along your long post.
These remarks came to mind - I don't write a dissertation.
Your idea was an intreresting one. My original reaction (above) was a
reminiscence to a 'believer's' challenge that I should 'disprove' god and my
answer was: only, if you prove something to exist can I refute it.
Best wishes
John Mikes
----- Original Message -----
From: "David Nyman" <david.nyman.domain.name.hidden>
To: "Everything List" <everything-list.domain.name.hidden>
Sent: Thursday, August 17, 2006 9:41 AM
Subject: The anti-roadmap - an alternative 'Theology'
>
> "Comp is false". Let's see where *that* leads. I'm erecting
> this as a signpost to indicate a direction, and I would beg the
> list's indulgence in helping me to look in this direction, rather
> than confining its comments to the ramshackle construction of the
> signpost itself. My hope is that you will help me to expose whatever is
> untrue or confused about what follows (I'm sure you will!). But I
> hope you will also 'catch my drift'.
>
> 1) The bit-stream
>
> Comp deals with a bit-stream representation of appearance. The theorems
> of comp process this bit-stream in terms of a formal system, creating a
> framework within which 'true or 'false' theorems may be
> evaluated. This system is by its nature closed, or tautological. The
> statements that can be made, their 'truth' or 'falsehood', are
> inherent in the axiomatic and operational characteristics of the formal
> system as applied to the bit-stream.
>
> 2) The instantiation
>
> In order to implement the comp approach, an instantiation is required
> that will represent the bit-stream and enact the formal operations. The
> Turing machine is an idealised version of such an instantiation. A
> digital computer is a physical version of a TM. Consequently comp may
> be instantiated in a digital computer, and copied in innumerable media
> that suitably preserve its informational structure.
>
> 3) Dimensionality
>
> The bit-stream is 'pure' information and as such is 0-dimensional.
> Multi-dimensionality emerges only at the level of the active
> instantiation of the bit-stream. Consequently what is Turing-emulable
> is the bit-stream (which includes a statement of the required formal
> operations - i.e. the program) and because this emulation is
> 0-dimensional, it is indifferent to form ('substrate-independent').
> Also because it is 0-dimensional, it is inherently powerless to
> interact directly with multi-dimensional reality. All such interaction
> takes place because what is implicit in the bit-stream is rendered
> explicit by its multi-dimensional instantiation. Although we may speak
> metaphorically (i.e. 'as if' projecting 'form' on to it) of the
> bit-stream as 'representational' in a virtual 0-dimensional sense,
> this is powerless as such to cause any interaction with the
> multi-dimensional environment. To do this requires that additional
> information, merely implicit in the bit-stream, is rendered explicit by
> the instantiation.
>
> If we consider an 'intelligent program' instantiated in a digital
> computer, 'explicit form' - multi-dimensionality - is 'added
> back' at the interfaces where the machine interacts with the external
> environment. For example, a display device transforms the bit-stream
> into pixels in a 2-dimensional arrangement. At the next 'layer' up,
> a user decides whether to interpret the 2-dimensional arrangements
> semantically (i.e. 'these are symbols') or graphically (i.e.
> 'this is a quasi-3-dimensional scene'). Up another layer, and the
> user transforms these judgements into direct interaction with a
> multi-dimensional environment.
>
> All pure bit-stream representations rely on implicit environmental
> assumptions in order to 'execute' as intended. DNA, for example,
> relies for its expression both on its multi-dimensional orientation in
> space, and the materials present in the local environment. This
> information is not present, though implicit, in the codons, but is
> *made explicit* by the environment that instantiates them.
>
> 4) Form
>
> The 'physical' description of the world, as I was rightly reminded
> by Peter, has no significant layering (well, perhaps it does, but more
> later). Appearance, however, displays complex layering, and as we have
> seen, this also 'appears' to extend to the intelligibility of the
> world in which we 'appear' to participate. 'Form' and
> 'layering' somehow emerge from whatever the physical model
> describes as a bit-stream. When we experience and interact with the
> world, we do so in a way that is inherently multi-dimensional. What is
> represented in this way is directly 'grasped' or 'enacted'
> (i.e. represented, structured) in multi-dimensional 'form' and
> unfolded by multi-dimensional 'motor units' into action in a
> multi-dimensional world. This is both what makes it non-invariant to
> Turing-emulation, and gives it its direct multi-dimensional linkage to
> enaction in multi-dimensional environments. Certainly, 0-dimensional
> bit-stream representations and pathways are entailed in such processes,
> but they serve to store and transmit information, not to enact its
> meaning or its consequences in the world - i.e. its intentionality
> as information-put-into-action.
>
> 5) Correlation
>
> How is the above to be correlated with the physical or bit-stream
> representation? Through appropriate forms. We already know this from
> the fertility of 'laws of form' that are intrinsic to science as
> practised - whether physical, chemical, biological, physiological,
> psychological, sociological, and so on up the 'levels'. At each
> level, 'laws of form' are abstracted that render this world-view
> intelligible, although they are not directly implied at the level below
> - hence Peter's comment about the 'lack of layering'. So,
> consider the brain. We can approach this through the lens of a variety
> of forms - squidgy grey mass, neural network, bio-electrical
> circuitry, neuro-chemical pathways, etc. - even 'digital
> computer'. None of these has yet succeeded in capturing a 'formal
> decomposition' that yields appearance, or even a mechanism that seems
> capable of enacting the construction of multi-dimensional
> representation as experienced.
>
> However, as the above analogies indicate, this is not a fruitless task,
> but an empirical one. There have been, and still are, innumerable
> 'formal decompositions' of the world that have served only to
> multiply mystery. The world, as we know, stands on the backs of an
> infinite stack of turtles, and motion is accomplished through the
> efforts of an innumerable insensible angelic host. ????? .......... We
> should be looking for a 'formal decomposition' of the brain that
> embraces both isomorphic representation of, and direct
> multi-dimensional interaction with, the external environment of the
> body, and beyond it the world. We should expect these forms to
> 'construct boundaries', the 'lines of cleavage' that do not
> exist in the 0-dimensional physical description. We should ask - from
> either side of this cleavage - 'who is looking, listening, tasting
> what lies on the other side?' The 'side' that is able to answer
> these questions intelligibly by enacting its responses in the world is
> the 'perceiver'. The other is the 'perceptual model'.
>
> The explicit multi-dimensional 'grasp' of form is what I contend
> makes all this non-invariant to Turing emulation. Note that I've not
> said 'non-Turing emulable', since anything that can be represented
> as a bit-stream may be Turing-emulated, but the issue here is whether
> multi-dimensional experience and enaction is invariant to such
> emulation. My claim is that it can't be, because it requires the
> instantiation to explicitly 'add back' the missing information that
> is only implicit in the 0-dimensional emulated bit-stream. It is this
> that makes multi-dimensional environments 'non-invariant to
> computation', as opposed to 'non-computable'. This is IMO the
> 'understanding' - the multi-dimensional enaction of
> multi-dimensionally-represented information - to which, for example,
> Penrose appeals as the source of mathematical intuition. It isn't
> Platonic reality to which the mathematician, or any of us, has direct
> access, but rather the multi-dimensional forms from which these
> 'perfect' concepts are abstracted.
>
> 6) Indexical existence
>
> Missing information? Surely this isn't the dreaded 'hidden
> variables'? I don't think it is. The missing information is what
> (some of us) are trying to express by 'I assert my indexical
> existence as a necessary fact'. This 'information' is entirely
> absent from the physical or other formal (virtual, or what we've
> sometimes rather unfortunately called 3rd-person) accounts of
> appearance/ reality. It expresses itself self-referentially, and this
> expression has 'qualities' (again what we perhaps unfortunately
> call 'qualia', but let it serve). I contend that qualia carry the
> meaning *like this!*, or more simply *this!*. From such 'codons'
> worlds of 'thisness' emerge. Since 'thisness' is at the same
> time the instantiation of the multi-dimensional environment, the
> 'thisness' of experience' can transform directly to the
> 'thisness' of enaction in the world. This is what we call meaning
> and intentionality. The project of mapping and correlating our accounts
> of the world-as-appearance-and-meaning and the world-as-structure has
> been well-termed 'Dual-aspect Science'. Let's get on with it.
>
>
> 7) Mass, space, gravity
>
> If the foregoing is speculative, what follows is ruminative. Having
> dismissed 'form' as significant in a physical decomposition of
> reality, does this perhaps force a re-appearance at the point where QM
> collides with General Relativity - i.e. where the bit-stream hits the
> instantiation? Curved space, gravitational interaction - these seem
> intrinsically geometrical/ topological/ 'shaped' ideas. Is there
> any analogy here to the relationship of formal description to
> instantiation? I wonder.....
>
> David
>
>
> >
>
>
> --
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>
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Received on Thu Aug 17 2006 - 16:50:17 PDT